KAIKAI’S KICKER: Nakuru highway a national embarrassment

Last weekend, we got into an animated chat with my friend, as born and bred sons of the County of Narok. It was about the prospects of having an international airport in Narok. We swung between excitement and amusement as we imagined the international airport in the sprawling plains South West of Narok. We even imagined suitable names for the airport – pioneers like Ole Gilisho, Molonket Ole Sempele, S.S. Ole Sankan and others came to mind.

We then imagined some probable direct flights – Charles De Gaulle Paris to William Ole Ntimama Narok… Oliver Tambo Johannesburg to Ole Tompoy International Narok or John F Kennedy New York to Justus Ole Tipis Narok… Whatever the name the Narok International Airport would assume. Then, a call came through from Gilgil, rudely throwing us out of dreamland. It was from a common friend of ours who had traveled to Nakuru the previous evening. He spent the night on the road. He was part of thousands other travelers who got stuck in a 15-hour gridlock along the Nairobi-Nakuru highway that night.

Now, our conversation changed from one about the lofty aspirations for international airports to one about the pressing need for decent roads. Let’s say it clearly fellow Kenyans; the Nairobi-Nakuru road is a national embarrassment. The humiliation travelers experience on this road is becoming too regular, and an almost assured happening every weekend. And this for the simple reason that the traffic along that road has outgrown many times its capacity.

The Kenya National Highways Authority estimates that over 20,000 vehicles use the Nakuru highway every day. The frequency of the traffic paralysis along this road have not only been a pain to Kenyans but an agonizing inconvenience to our neighbouring countries. The supposed Great North Corridor often turns into a dead ended nightmare for motorists that include transit truck drivers ferrying goods to Uganda, South Sudan, Rwanda and even the Democratic Republic of Congo. So, indeed that Nairobi-Nakuru road shames us at the regional and the continental front.

Now, if a Cabinet dispatch released in March this year is to be believed, then we have exactly two weeks to the groundbreaking of the long overdue construction of a four-lane highway from Rironi in Kiambu County to Mau Summit in Nakuru County. It goes without doubt that Kenyans are eagerly waiting for the construction to begin. It is shameful that government has taken a whole seven years to just talk about constructing the Nairobi-Nakuru highway.

The talk dates back to 2018 when the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) awarded the construction project to a French company, the Vinci Group, under the Private Public Partnership arrangement that would have seen the company construct and operate the highway and collect its fees for 30 years. Under a cloud of political intrigue, that concession initiated during former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s term stands cancelled today as President William Ruto’s administration explore a different path towards the planned construction of the Nairobi-Nakuru highway.

What should concern Kenyans is, it is still all talk at this stage, and it has been 7 years of such talk. Positions keep shifting. A Cabinet memo stated that construction is to begin in June, that is two weeks from today. Late this evening, press reports quoted Deputy President Kithure Kindiki as saying the construction will begin in July, that is a month after the Cabinet date.

Allow me now to go call my friend, we need to finalise on a proposed name for the Narok International Airport.